Total pages in book: 193
Estimated words: 184001 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 920(@200wpm)___ 736(@250wpm)___ 613(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 184001 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 920(@200wpm)___ 736(@250wpm)___ 613(@300wpm)
And the reality of him is so much more terrifying than the stories.
As if he can hear my thoughts, Bane slowly reaches out a hand toward my neck, and I try to force my limbs to unlock, but I’m a statue as he claims a golden curl plastered against my neck and for the first time, something alive flickers in Bane’s eyes as he rubs the strand reverently.
“Touch her and I swear to God, I’ll end you!”
I’m too terrified to tell Thorin that he’s already touching me. Thorin’s shout draws Bane’s attention away from my hair. His brows slam downward as he looks over my head, and his bare chest expands with a deep inhale, and then something rough and angry rumbles from within before he moves as if he’s going to step around me.
And go where? Into the river? It’s suicide. The water is chest high now, and the current is too rough to swim.
“Wait. Stop.” Bane keeps going while I stumble after him. His focus is directed across the river, on Khalil and Thorin, with deadly intent, and he’s one step from walking off the ledge when I do the dumbest thing ever.
I grab his arm.
Bane is nothing more than a blur of movement as he reacts.
He spins while I pull the tranq gun free of its holster. I watch in absolute horror as Bane knocks it from my hand, and I don’t see where it goes because his hand is around my throat in a vise grip.
“No,” he roughly commands. No? No what? “Stay.”
“You can’t—” His fingers tighten in warning, cutting off the rest of my sentence. Panic flares in my chest and my stomach, because for fuck’s sake, this is Bane, but just as swiftly I cut off the emotion and focus. You know what to do.
Dropping my chin to protect my airway, I lift both arms and bring my hands together to form one fist before I bring it down as hard as I can into the sensitive joint of his elbow. The blow doesn’t break his hold completely, but it loosens it enough for me to twist away and out of reach.
Bane is still scowling, but he doesn’t try to reclaim me.
When I sneak a glance across the river to assure myself they’re unharmed even though I stopped Bane, I see Thorin leaning against a tree in pain and Khalil searching for a way across.
There’s another loud crack a moment later, and I assume it’s more thunder until I hear Thorin’s shout. “Aurelia! Look out!”
I see him pointing to something above my head, but there’s no time to think or question before I’m yanked toward the ledge and out of the way. I’m knocked into Bane, and I don’t have time to dread those lethal hands on my body again because a tree comes crashing down right where I was standing.
Thorin shouts my name and an order to stay put, but I only get a glimpse of the tree’s long trunk hovering over the churning water now before Bane and I begin to slide.
Too late I realize we’re right at the edge.
My heart drops like a deadweight in my stomach when the mud separates and sends us both careening over the side of the slippery slope. I hear someone scream as we fall through the air, and I’m certain it’s me before I plunge into the cold water. I’m tumbled, swept, and pushed downriver as water fills my ravaged lungs, and I wait for death to claim me.
KHALIL
I watch with my heart in my throat as lightning strikes a tree near Aurelia and Bane, splitting it in half. Thorin shouts a warning, but Bane is already tugging a wide-eyed Aurelia out of the way. It’s a decision I’m going to have to dissect later since it doesn’t fit everything we know about him.
Nothing about Bane has been normal since Aurelia arrived at our cabin.
He didn’t wake up earlier when Zeke was in danger, so why now?
I’m pulled from my train of thought when Thorin shouts to Aurelia that we’re coming. It’s only then that I notice the tree that nearly crushed Aurelia creating a makeshift bridge between our side and theirs.
Before I can come up with a safe way for Thorin and me to cross it without falling into the water, Aurelia and Bane both fall into the river.
They’re gone in an instant.
Aurelia’s terrified scream is cut off as they both disappear underwater.
It’s a few terror-stricken moments before Bane resurfaces, and then Aurelia. She’s too busy struggling to keep her head above water to notice him fighting against the current to reach her. I’m not even sure which she would prefer—the knife’s edge that comes with Bane or drowning. The turbulent current carries them downriver until they disappear from sight around a bend.
I burst into action.